Major news for the Divergent fandom: The final movie, titled Ascendant, will be skipping a theatrical release and will instead head straight to television.
In addition, Lionsgate is hoping that Ascendant (AKA “Allegiant, Part 2” until they renamed it last year) will serve as a springboard for a spinoff Divergent TV series.
Variety, who broke the news, cautions that talks are in the early stages and that Lionsgate has yet to go to the networks to pitch the idea, but this is the current plan to end Divergent. “Lionsgate’s television group will handle production,” they write. “The idea is to finalize the storylines involving the current cast and to introduce a new cast, who would then continue the series on either a traditional or streaming network.”
One good network for a series like this would be ABC Family / Freeform, where The Mortal Instruments has found success in the form of the TV series Shadowhunters. Remember: The Mortal Instruments had one movie adaptation in 2013, but plans for a sequel fell apart after the film didn’t do well at the box office. Instead, the series was rebooted for TV.
At this time we don’t know if Theo James, Shailene Woodley, and the other stars will be returning for the Divergent TV show, but this writer thinks it’s highly unlikely.
Each Divergent movie has had less box office success than the last (See below). The most recent movie opened in theaters in March, and Ascendant was scheduled to open next summer.
Divergent series domestic box office tallies
- Divergent: $54.4 million opening / $150 million total
- Insurgent: $52.2 million opening / $130 million total
- Allegiant: $29 million opening / $66 million total
Lionsgate had decided to shoot Allegiant, Part 1 and Allegiant, Part 2 separately, which may’ve been their first mistake when planning how they’d wrap up the franchise. The finales for Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and Twilight all filmed their Part 1 / Part 2 finales simultaneously to save money.
Rumors about Divergent spinoffs first surfaced in early 2015 when we also learned that Lionsgate was hoping to spinoff The Hunger Games. Their sister studio Summit was also contemplating a Twilight spinoff series, but those plans never panned out.
Funnily enough, Hypable joked on April Fools Day this year that the final movie would be released as a radio drama due to Allegiant’s poor performance.